Opinion

Newton Emerson: DUP threats against British government turn out to be bluster

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Newton Emerson
Newton Emerson Newton Emerson

Last week, the DUP’s lurid threats to bring down the British government turned out to be bluster. This week, the party has been even more meekly obedient. The European Research Group, representing around 40 rebel Tory Brexiteers, tabled amendments in the Commons that would have outlawed any customs or regulatory sea border without Stormont consent, tying the prime minister’s hands in Brexit negotiations.

This worried the government sufficiently to seek urgent legal advice but it all came to nothing and the amendments were withdrawn after the DUP refused to back its own supposedly blood-red line.

Why the abject surrender? Voting against the government on a Brexit issue would breach the DUP-Tory confidence and supply agreement, one week before the budget is to distribute the remaining half of the DUP-Tory cash and during a week when Tory and Labour backbenchers moved their own bills and amendments for abortion and same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. Theresa May just had too many opportunities for immediate revenge.

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The unreformed nature of the DUP was displayed when two of its senior MLAs mocked UUP MLA Robbie Butler for attending a Papal reception. One of the DUP representatives, Christopher Stalford, says he crossed himself as a joke over speculation on his own attendance, which is credible if not creditable. But the other, Caleb Foundation member Mervyn Storey, appears to have referred in all seriousness to “the antichrist”.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this culture within the DUP is that it is never publicly challenged from the top. The party still awaits its Neil Kinnock versus Militant moment (admittedly a poor example, now Militant has seized Labour back.)

So it feels notable that DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson, rumoured to be on manoeuvres as an imminent future leader, has stepped forward to say “this kind of behaviour is unacceptable”.

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Sinn Féin former finance minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir has appeared before the RHI inquiry, which he decided to set up. Or did he? Statements and emails published by the inquiry reveal Ó Muilleoir was in close contact with at least three senior republicans at Sinn Féin headquarters over the heating scheme and would not sign a key document until he had cleared it with one of the three, who acted as a go-between during 1990s peace talks on behalf of the IRA. Of course, the back-office control of Sinn Féin is official - it was the finding of the last Independent Monitoring Commission report. The existence of a hidden tier of de facto special advisers, beyond the statutory limits on who can advise ministers, raises other questions but Sinn Féin has dismissed this as semantics - why should a party not coordinate policy?

More ominous is that when Stormont collapsed, Ó Muilleoir reportedly told one of his staff “this place will be down for five years.”

Had that just come straight from the top?

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Mary Lou McDonald is all over the place, suggesting a bit of a struggle at the top. The Sinn Féin president has said her party will not be marking the centenary of Northern Ireland, which she dismissed as unionists getting “their wee statelet.”

Yet in August, discussing the fears that led to partition, McDonald said “Unionists, you were right” - a comment seen as unlocking dialogue on the past. Sinn Féin also criticised the DUP for not marking the centenary of the Easter Rising.

Last week, McDonald demanded an immediate border poll in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Yet in August she said she did not want a border poll in the event of “a crash of very hard Brexit”. She withdrew that remark days later, after apparently being humiliated by whoever is really in charge. Now they have made her revisit that embarrassment all over again.

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In what looks like the ultimate refusal to invest in infrastructure west of the Bann, unionists at Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon council have refused to consider even discussing a footbridge across the Upper Bann, where it meets Lough Neagh. Some residents on the east bank feel they have been ignored by campaigners for the bridge and the community divide along this stretch of the river has been perfectly replicated at the council – then escalated to assembly level, with DUP MLA Carla Lockhart sending her council colleagues a public letter of congratulation. The whole affair is most unfortunate - everyone on both banks should make the 10-mile round trip to sit down and start talking again from scratch. To break the ice, they could ask why the DUP thinks if can build a road and rail bridge across the Irish Sea when it cannot bear discussing a cycle and footbridge over a river.

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“Northern Ireland has spoken”, a new billboard advertising campaign has declared, along with a prominent figure of 71 per cent.

This turns out to be an add for Pepsi and not a reference to the 1998 referendum on the Good Friday Agreement, which passed by 71.1 per cent. The allusion appears entirely coincidental and unintentional. You would need to be around 40 now for a voter’s recollection of 1998 - well past Pepsi’s target demographic.

newton@irishnews.com